# How much work does a yeoman do?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 24, 2013, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566 "2013-09-24T06:14:29Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/1 "2013-09-24T06:14:29Z")
Every blue moon I see the phrase, “[so-and-so] did yeoman’s work.” I’m not sure I’m asking the right question- maybe it is a type of work? Or… something I don’t understand because I am not familiar with a single yeoman?
What is the story behind working yeomen and their place in idiom?
---
### Author:  [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/2 "2013-09-24T06:52:07Z")
A yeoman was a farmer who owned his own land (as opposed to working on some lord’s land). So as a pre-industrial agricultural worker and an independent businessman, you have to figure he worked very hard indeed.
---
### Author:  [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/3 "2013-09-24T06:53:08Z")
A “yeoman” was a hard working peasant farmer. To do yeoman’s work therefore just means to do a lot of hard, and often tedious and unappreciated work. It isn’t a specific unit of work.
For example, if you have a thousand flyers you want to mail out, and one guy folds all of the flyers, stuffs them in the envelope, puts the stamps on them, etc. and basically does all of the grunt work involved, he could be said to have done the yeoman’s work in getting the flyers out (especially if the guy who wrote the flyer gets all of the credit for it and the guy doing all the grunt work stuffing the envelope gets none).
A yeoman is also a type of enlisted man in the U.S. Navy. They do a lot of clerical and administrative work, which again is a lot of hard work that most people take for granted and do not appreciate.
---
### Author:  [@NeonMadman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NeonMadman)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/4 "2013-09-24T16:41:09Z")
I thought a yeoman was one of those guys with the red shirts on _Star Trek_.
:rolleyes:
---
### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/5 "2013-09-24T16:49:22Z")
[Yeoman Rand](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/84/JaniceRand.jpg) flirted a lot with Kirk. 😉 Keeping Kirk satisfied was hard work but somebody had to do it.
---
### Author:  [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/6 "2013-09-24T17:00:19Z")
Seriously, yeoman is an an officer in the U.S. Navy who works as a clerk. They start as a E-1 yeoman seaman recruit and the highest rank is an E-9 Master Chief Yeoman.
> **[Definition of YEOMAN](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yeoman)**
>
> an attendant or officer in a royal or noble household; a person attending or assisting another : retainer; yeoman of the guard… See the full definition
> **[Yeoman (United States Navy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeoman_%28United_States_Navy%29)**
>
> The yeoman rate is one of the oldest rates in the U.S. Navy, dating back to 1794. Historically, the Navy yeomen were responsible for keeping the storerooms for the ship's gunners, carpenters and boatswains. With the transition from sail to steam, yeomen were assigned to the ship's engineers. In the modern Navy, a yeoman is an enlisted service member who performs administrative and clerical work.
> The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 14) granted the new U.S. Congress the power to bu...
---
### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/7 "2013-09-24T17:14:51Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> Seriously, yeoman is an an officer in the U.S. Navy who works as a clerk.
> [YEOMAN Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yeoman)
[nitpic]In the modern parlance, a yeoman is a **petty** officer in a military navy who does administrative duties. Enlisted, not commissioned. Seriously.[/nicpic]
I’ve known yeomen in the course of my military career. If I were to characterise the phrase “yeoman’s work” by their example, I’d assume you were desparaging the subject’s work ethic or attention to detail. 😛 Unless you were talking about making the office coffee. That was some good coffee.
(I’m sure there are competent and consciencous yeoman ratings out there; I just never ran into them in my Air Force career.)
The cited Merriam-Webster definition seems to favor an association between its definition 1 (“an attendant or assistant in a royal or noble house”) and “yeoman work”, defining the latter in terms of “great and loyal service”.
[This article](http://notesfrombabel.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/a-plague-on-words-yeomans-work/) pooh-poohs this assertion and cites a body of (mostly American) legal and published quotes that demonstrates that “yeoman’s work” is **hard work** … like a peasant freeholding farmer would do, if he didn’t want to starve to death after paying his taxes.
---
### Author:  [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/8 "2013-09-24T19:44:29Z")
I am much more familiar with the expression “yeoman service” rather than “yeoman’s work”. “Yeoman service”, I think, implies doing a lot of tedious but useful and much appreciated work. It may not be physically hard work, but it a lot of work, probably dull and repetitive, and the speaker who uses the expression is acknowledging their appreciation of what the “yeoman” has done.
---
### Author:  [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/9 "2013-09-24T22:38:22Z")
> [@gnoitall](#):
>
> I’ve known yeomen in the course of my military career. If I were to characterise the phrase “yeoman’s work” by their example, I’d assume you were desparaging the subject’s work ethic or attention to detail. 😛
I wouldn’t voice that opinion anywhere near the [Yeomen Warders](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeomen_Warders) or the [Yeomen of the Guard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeomen_of_the_Guard). 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Capt\_Kirk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt_Kirk)
#### Post date: [September 24, 2013, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/10 "2013-09-24T22:56:48Z")
> [@aceplace57](#):
>
> [Yeoman Rand](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/84/JaniceRand.jpg) flirted a lot with Kirk. 😉 Keeping Kirk satisfied was hard work but somebody had to do it.
Yes Yes she did and I, belatedly, thank her for it 😃
**Capt**
---
### Author:  [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2017, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-much-work-does-a-yeoman-do/669566/11 "2017-05-03T19:14:10Z")
Bumped.
Yeomen are also Oberlin College athletes (the college’s motto is “Learning and Labor”): [http://www.goyeo.com/](http://www.goyeo.com/)